


"Listen to Death"

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Futures, Character Study, Healing, I don't really have an excuse for this, Lucio and Death talk about what could've been basically, Other, change, possibilities, some spoilers for Lucio's route/backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27929686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: “Would you transform your history, if you could?” Death asks Lucio.
Relationships: Apprentice/Lucio (The Arcana)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	"Listen to Death"

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!!! I hope you enjoy this, if you read it!!! I'm super sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made. I... like imagining other routes Lucio's life coulda gone, I guess??? Wanted to imagine some other ways he might have met the Apprentice. >:D Also, idk if the Scourge of the South actually live in viking-y longhouses, but I thought the idea was sort of warm.
> 
> Thank you for reading!!! I hope you're staying safe/having a wonderful day~

Death’s cobwebs-in-your-hair, dust-under-your-fingernails whispers shouldn’t be able to cut through the Devil’s demands, let alone Lucio’s screaming and your own pleading voice — “Isn’t there another way to pay his debts?! Please don’t take him; please don’t _hurt_ him —!” — but have it known, on good authority: Death’s voice can cut through anything at all, if he wants it to. 

**Death speaks, now**. Even the Devil’s goat-jaw snaps shut. 

“Would you transform your history, if you could?” Death asks Lucio. There’s no question that he’s talking to Lucio, by the way — you know it the same way you know to keep breathing. “Would you make yourself anew, shaped from human want and hungry blood, from all the pain you’ve spread and known?” 

“Uh,” says Lucio. He’s wearing the Devil’s fire and the Devil’s chains just like he used to wear furs and silks and ornate gold-ruby bangles, but as Death speaks all these things seem grey and remembered, like the fire barely burns at all. Lucio asked to have himself painted standing triumphantly on Death’s slaughtered head, once, but now you can see shaky gratitude in the twist of his lip. He’s trying to gather his voice back from that dark strange place it went when he could only scream. “I guess I’d make some choices differently, yeah. I guess I wish...” Lucio meets your eyes, and his lips fall open. You know he wants to take love itself in his hands and shove it into your arms like gifts wrapped in red velvet. You know he’s having a hard time sorting out what he wants to say, here with Death seeping in and the Devil watching, the rest of your friends in chains beside him. Reality is unraveling. Maybe Lucio thinks he should say goodbye while he can still form sentences. His eyes seem clear and bright and wet. 

And then Lucio winces, shuddering in his chains. He tells Death he’s glad his roads led to you, somehow, impossibly, miraculously, but that he knows he’s made a mistake or two along the way. Oopsie, right? Oh shit, the earth is formed of gravedirt, and the worms are gnawing at your feet as you walk, and dear god the red plague-beetles in the air look like splattered liquid blood. So many are dead, and you might’ve died too, without Lucio ever learning your name or what kind of cookies you’d be most excited to bake with him. So many things are broken, and Lucio can’t for the life of him think how to slap ‘em back together. The universe, for one thing. The universe, which Lucio sold away to the Devil along with his own self. But you guys, like, _live_ in the universe. So what’re you supposed to do now?

Lucio doesn’t say all that, but you hear the horror in his voice as he speaks his guilt aloud. As he listens to Death, and answers: sure, I’d do things differently, knowing what I know. Of course. 

“I’m glad I met you, too,” you tell Lucio, and he takes a soft breath despite everything. He looks surprised for a second, and then musters up a cocky smile. Winks at you, like he’s winked so many times before. You try to take a step towards him, but you can’t, quite yet. Death still has the stage, my friend. 

**Patience.**

“This man chooses change,” Death says, and his voice is those gravestones Lucio ran from in the labyrinth; his voice is finality and severance and closing your eyes before you drink whatever the hell is in your cup right down. “You say Lucio Morgasson has to die, and I agree with you —“ Lucio’s strangled protests sound so human and small in the face of the Arcana. Death shushes him, and continues — “But maybe he will be reborn. Maybe, even now, it’s already started.”

The Devil tries to tell Death the deal is already made — it isn’t Death’s place to meddle with any of this — but **Death’s place is everywhere** and he can meddle with anything he likes. He is change itself, and what stone can stand against a tide forever without being worn into some new shape? “Tell us your transformed history,” Death tells Lucio. “Let’s see who you could’ve been, and then... if I will it... who you could become. Or...”

Lucio swallows hard. “Or?”

“Or I’ll leave you here, and we’ll give the poor Devil what he’s owed.” You know what Death’s going to say before he speaks.

“Right,” says Lucio. “Right...” He shoots you helpless, searching eyes, and you smile at him. You wish you could smooth down his hair and kiss his forehead; you wish you could tell him that you’ll stand beside him no matter what comes next. You could take both his hands, flesh and prosthetic gold, in yours, and you could tell him about all the playful warmth you see in him. All the _good_. How many times he’s protected you, and made you laugh, and guarded you while you slept. 

Instead, you say, “I’m here, Lucio. Whatever you say, I’m here. What would you change first? If you could change _anything_?” 

“Easy,” Lucio says. Answering you, instead of Death, now. His voice is so much more confident, telling you his truths. He grins ruefully, painfully, showing sharp white teeth like his hunting dogs’ fangs. “I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t sell my parents’ hearts to that thing in the woods, right?”

Lucio’s very first deal, coming shivery and scared in front of so many crooked deals: you know he traded his parents’ lives for the gift of pestilence, so he could become leader of the Scourge of the South. His mother and his community didn’t believe in him — he was newly eighteen, and desperate to be given what he thought the world owed. Growing up with the Scourge, Lucio knew it would be honorable to cut his parents down in a proper duel. He knew, maybe then, as they bled out into the snow, they’d be proud of him. But cheating hadn’t worked out too great; carrying pestilence under his skin had only managed to get his father out of the game, and his mother was... hm. It just hadn’t been a good deal. The red plague-beetles had skittered in Lucio’s footsteps ever since, and catching that plague they spread himself had absolutely sucked, and... and if _you’d_ stayed dead, before Lucio met you, wasn’t that unforgivable? Nowadays the thought of this world without you feels like cookies without sugar, the palace gardens without dogs chasing sticks through the flowerbeds, a ring with all its gaudy red jewels plucked out. The thought of you curled in on yourself, dying of the plague, sobs wracking your shoulders, makes Lucio want to draw his sword. He can’t, like, _fight off_ the past, obviously. He can’t slit history’s throat, or hack his blade into the plague’s messy chest again and again and again, splattering its pieces everywhere. He can’t. 

But if he could —

“So you don’t make your first deal,” Death muses. **“What do you become instead?”**

“Maybe I stay with the Scourge,” Lucio mutters. “I’m just... Monty, for a while longer?” Before Lucio’s name was “Lucio,” he was Montag Morgasson. Monty. You’ve never murmured that name before kissing him, but as you’re watching Lucio shuffle uncertainly under the weight of his chains the story he’s telling begins to feel true. Just for now. Just tasting what the change could’ve meant. 

_Montag Morgasson lives with the Scourge, fighting under tattered red beetle banners — better to be overwhelming and deadly than to be noble and loved... better, isn’t it? — and getting drunk in the longhouses, snow bitter outside. It’s hard to look his mom in the eye for a long time, not without wanting to spit, not without wanting to crack her stone-sure expression apart a little. Changing her mind with rage, because of course he’s good enough, isn’t he? Of course he’s Leader Material. But Montag knows he’ll die, if he challenges his mother directly; he knows she’ll gut him like a fish, if she has to, or else send him scampering out into the wastelands on a head start. Chasing him. So he ducks his head and bites his tongue, and he pulls pranks on his friends, and he learns to hunt in the wilds, and he tells stories for coin, sometimes, because he’s got an obvious flair for the dramatic. Even his mom agrees about that one._

_When Montag can’t afford kohl for his eyes, sometimes he finds it slipped into his pack, anyway, as if by some sorta kindly spirit, or maybe his dad. When Montag takes lovers, it feels like something’s missing every single time — because that’s how Lucio Morgasson a lifetime away is telling the story, and he wants to bring the Scourge’s Prince Monty to your side. In time._

_Montag figures his shit out. He’s got all sorts of fur cloaks from beasts he slayed himself, and he can mix drinks well enough that pretty much everyone wants to hang out with him. Or... or even if that isn’t true, at least we can say he has some good birthdays in there, and he throws a killer party, and he adopts two twin dogs that bound along at his side like sleek white shadows. Maybe he doesn’t think to name those dogs Mercedes and Melchior, in this life, but he names them... something cool... and they get to hunt together all the time. Lucio — er, Montag — stops caring so much about winning his mom’s faith. Maybe it’d be exciting, to lead the Scourge. Maybe he’d be the most fearsome beetle-swarm king the frozen south had ever seen, and maybe he still wants everybody’s eyes on him, drinking him in, wanting him around._

_Or maybe not. Maybe the longer Montag lives, the happier he thinks he’d be with just a couple people he genuinely likes close by him, and, you know, of course his dogs. As Lucio’s telling this part of the story, he’s watching you. You are that person he genuinely likes; you are what he might take in exchange for a starving kingdom, always after more and more blood. Lucio looks like himself, and yet he doesn’t. You realize that as he’s been speaking, the Montag that could’ve lived started showing through: he’s got longer hair, tied back in a low ponytail against his neck... it reminds you a little of Lucio’s mother Morga’s... and eye makeup smudged like ashes, instead of the slick oily glossy stuff he usually likes to wear. He’s got twin dogs emblazoned on his armor — reveling in what he is, what he loves, rather than looking for new familiars everywhere, building a whole menagerie in hopes of becoming someone new. Those dogs are smiling wild wicked smiles, and there’s gold like blood on their muzzles and paws. They’re silver, those dogs, in a field of gold. A field of blood. _

_Eventually, we’ve got to get Lucio... Montag... to Vesuvia, because that’s where you are. Maybe he arrives as the Leader of the Scourge, finally, because after so stupidly long his mom says he’s good enough. Claps him on the shoulder and says she always knew he could be more than a spoiled brat. Maybe he’s been called in to help with a battle or something, against a foe so awful people’ll even try bringing in the Scourge of the South to chase it out. Maybe Montag takes pity on poor Vesuvia, or maybe he just wants to see what kinda monster could get ‘em all groveling on their pretty knees for help, or maybe he just likes a good challenge. Maybe he’s felt a pull to the north for as long as he can remember, almost like there’s someone waiting for him there._

_And then maybe he meets you as your hero, this time. Montag Morgasson, whose armies saved the day. An amazingly strong guy who knows a shit ton of drinking songs, and maybe he’s not, like, a Count or anything... maybe the Scourge can’t afford to give you all the nice things Lucio could’ve given you... but you could still come back to the south, if you wanted to. You could rule by his side. His birthright. Or... maybe he’d stay in Vesuvia with you. It is nice and warm around there. Or maybe..._

_Or maybe Montag Morgasson comes into Vesuvia as a wanderer. That could work, too. Maybe instead of waiting around to become a leader, Montag tells his parents goodbye on his own terms and disappears into the snow. Maybe he and his dogs live as restless travelers — mercenary travelers? Or something else, this time? — for ages and ages, out of choice now, instead of exile, and Montag grows so used to sprawling endless landscapes that he feels weird in the crowds when he first reaches Vesuvia. Maybe he comes into your shop for that first time looking for medicine, or directions, or just a chance to breathe for a second. Maybe he asks if you have any work for him, because he’s starving, and you fold the loaf of pumpkin bread you just bought into his hands without another word. Maybe you eat that bread together, and he tells you stories from the road, and you ask him to come by again. Because you like him, even without money or a fancy title or any of the things Montag always assumed would get people actually liking him. So he does come back. You’re happy to see him. Maybe even your friends are happy to see him. ‘Cause he hasn’t... made a name for himself here, or anything. _

_As he’s telling this part of the story, Lucio’s grin has gone a little soft. Or... maybe soft smiles just look more natural on his face, right now? It won’t last, of course it won’t last, but your chest hurts looking at him describing your hearth fire. He wants to imagine solving problems for you. He wants to imagine game nights, and Hikes of Doom, and his body not giving out on him for a long time. Maybe he loses his arm to a battle in this world, too, or maybe a leg; maybe he’s handed over some toes to frostbite, or had an eye clawed out by an animal, or all sorts of possible dangers. But he ends up next to you, all the same._

_As a wanderer or the leader of the Scourge, as a mercenary or the disgraced former Count of Vesuvia, Montag Morgasson ends up holding you as you fall asleep. That’s important. But maybe he can be awesome even without making deals for magic all over the place; maybe you can carry the magic, and he’ll carry the sword. Maybe you’ll make cookies again, but in Nadia’s palace kitchens this time, and maybe Lucio will be able to learn that healing magic trick, at least, so he can help you out when you get hurt. Just like you help him._

Or something like that.

“Did I answer okay?” Lucio asks Death, and his soft smile twists into something wheedling and desperate, sharp and dangerous like his smiles can’t help but seem, nowadays. His long golden hair is shorter, and the worn leather boots are gone. The paths untaken fade, and there’s only the Lucio you know, looking tired. “I think I did pretty great.”

“This man had chosen change,” Death says, again. “Lucio Morgasson is dead, and he will wear the mark of the Devil’s chains burned across his skin until he’s finally in the dirt. But when one self dies, another opens his eyes. That is how it always is.” 

“... Okay,” Lucio says. “So... can we just get out of here, or what?”

“Leave the choices you made to their graves. Live differently,” Death says. “Remake yourself. If you fail, the debts must be collected all over again.”

“As is only fair,” huffs the Devil.

**“But if Lucio Morgasson is dead, then let Lucio Morgasson rise to his feet. One day soon enough, he will die again. And again, and again. That, too, is how it always is.”**

Death’s whisper fades away to almost nothing, over those last couple words. You strain to hear. You know all things die, just as all things change, though maybe that means slowly, though maybe that means only in ways humans can’t rightly hope to wrap their fragile heads around. Again and again and again. Lucio looks like he’s going to be sick, but he clears his throat sloppily and reminds himself to smile. 

When the Devil lets Lucio stand, eventually, you squeeze him around the waist, careful to avoid his steaming burns. You pool healing in your hands, and press it against his skin. He leans into you. You’ll be able to patch him up more carefully, once you get this whole “the world is falling apart!” problem straightened out.

You won’t hear Death speak again, at least not for a while yet. 


End file.
